Co-reporter:Michael T. Scerba, Christopher M. Leavitt, Matthew E. Diener, Andrew F. DeBlase, Timothy L. Guasco, Maxime A. Siegler, Nathaniel Bair, Mark A. Johnson, and Thomas Lectka
The Journal of Organic Chemistry 2011 Volume 76(Issue 19) pp:7975-7984
Publication Date(Web):September 2, 2011
DOI:10.1021/jo2015328
We report detailed studies on the characterization of an intramolecular NH–F hydrogen bond formed within a fluorinated “proton sponge” derivative. An ammonium ion, generated from 8-fluoro-N,N-dimethylnaphthalen-1-amine, serves as a charged hydrogen bond donor to a covalently bound fluorine appropriately positioned on the naphthalene skeleton. Potentiometric titrations of various N,N-dimethylnaphthalen-1-amines demonstrate a significant increase in basicity when hydrogen bonding is possible. X-ray crystallography reveals that NH–F hydrogen bonding in protonated 8-fluoro-N,N-dimethylnaphthalen-1-amine is heavily influenced by ion pairing in the solid state; bifurcated and trifurcated hydrogen bonds are formed depending on the counterion utilized. Compelling evidence of hydrogen bonding in the 8-fluoro-N,N-dimethylnaphthyl-1-ammonium cation is provided by gas-phase cryogenic vibrational photodissociation spectroscopy. Solution-phase infrared spectroscopy provides complementary results, and the frequencies of the N–H stretching mode in both phases are in excellent agreement with the computed vibrational spectra. NMR analysis of protonated 8-fluoro-N,N-dimethylnaphthalen-1-amine demonstrates significant H–F coupling between the N–H hydrogen and fluorine that cannot be attributed to long-range, through-bond interactions; the couplings correlate favorably with calculated values. The results obtained from these experiments are congruent with the formation of an NH–F hydrogen bond upon protonation of 8-fluoro-N,N-dimethylnaphthalen-1-amine.